After reading Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead last year and it becoming an instant favorite, I have been looking forward to reading Emily Austin’s first book, Oh Honey. It was a lot darker than EiTRWSBD, and difficult to read at times, but so well written. Emily Austin has some of the best prose I’ve ever read.

Once again she is excellent at portraying depression. I loved how Jane was written. She is an extremely traumatized woman and her trauma affects her immensely, but she either doesn’t realize or doesn’t care. That’s just the way things are. I definitely care about my trauma and how it affects me, but to an extent, that’s just the way things are. I can’t just go around thinking about how awful it is, nor can I just not think of it altogether with it being such a massive part of my life. I think a lot of people who have experienced trauma can relate to casually mentioning something they have experienced and being met with horror and/or altering a story to make it more palatable to others.

As I said before, Oh Honey is much darker than EiTRWSBD, so definitely check trigger warnings, but it is also balanced with humor. It reminded me of my time in middle and high school, being majorly depressed and surrounded by other majorly depressed people, joking and laughing about extremely dark topics. It made the book a weird blend of painful and nostalgic.

Emily Austin has quickly skyrocketed on my list of favorite authors, and I think I’m going to wait until I read Interesting Facts About Space before I call it, but she may just replace Ottessa Moshfegh as my number 1.